Common SW misconceptions put right.

That is of course your choice, however I do think it is important that newbies know what the official SW line on this is, so that if they choose to tweak the plan they are doing it from an informed position.

quite right Circes, this thread is common misconceptions put right ;)
 
I remember seeing a documentary about food being blended... there was an experiment using a team of oil rig workers who were spit into 2 teams, each member of both teams were given the EXACT SAME meal but one team ate theirs blended, and the experiment showed that the team who ate their meal blended stayed fuller for longer:)

I believe that experiment was using vegetables, not fruit. It was proven that soup, for example, kept the stomach fuller than eating the same food unblended. I have to confess to being baffled by the science as to why soup is OK but a smoothie isn't, though! I think it comes down to the fibrous cell structures in vegetables which don't break down as easily as those in fruit.

I think the thing to remember is if you blend or mash your fruit and still lose weight, well carry on - I have to confess to not synning my grilled pineapple or the banana in my toasted banana sandwich (scrummy). But if your weight loss starts to stall, these are the areas you might like to look at before reducing your syns.
 
I believe that experiment was using vegetables, not fruit. It was proven that soup, for example, kept the stomach fuller than eating the same food unblended. I have to confess to being baffled by the science as to why soup is OK but a smoothie isn't, though! I think it comes down to the fibrous cell structures in vegetables which don't break down as easily as those in fruit.

I think the thing to remember is if you blend or mash your fruit and still lose weight, well carry on - I have to confess to not synning my grilled pineapple or the banana in my toasted banana sandwich (scrummy). But if your weight loss starts to stall, these are the areas you might like to look at before reducing your syns.

yes, I think the meal was chicken and veg and I too am still baffled and can't wait to chat with my sw consultant on Friday, hopefully she'll tell me that it comes down to the fact that SW tell us to syn blended fruit incase we over indulge etc (as I stated in a previous post I think this is the main reason for synning blended fruit)

Quite recently our sw consultant told us that the reason the tin of Mac 'n Cheese is no longer syn free is that sw members used to blend the contents of the tin and use this as a sauce to cover a meal instead of eating the contents of the tin as a meal, and therefore over consuming, so I think I might get a similar answer on Friday....and if she says it's because fruit gains calories after being blended (can't see it myself) then I shall no longer be eating blended fruit:cry:

So for now, I shall eat my allocated fruit allowance blended and hope i continue to lose weight.:rolleyes:

:)As for anyone else reading this thread..new members or not, I speak for myself when I say for now I'm going to continue to blend my fruit, and sw do say that we should syn blended fruit, I knew that anyway, I just wanted to know why,:confused: so if in doubt follow the book and continue to syn any fruit that you blend... :)

so.... now Im off to eat some unblended grapes, I didn't have time to blend today, but whole grapes are yummy so no probs:D
 
jaylou said:
Here is the SW answer as to why blended fruit is synned.

Why are some fruits Free when raw, but have a Syn value when cooked, juiced or pureed?

A: While fruit in its natural form is bulky, filling and often time-consuming to eat, in cooked, pureed, liquidised or smoothie form it makes it very easy to over-consume and is a very effective way of adding a lot of extra energy (calories) in a non-bulky and non-filling way, which doesn’t satisfy your appetite in the same way as eating fresh whole/sliced fruit. Consider eating an orange. Peeling, breaking up the segments and eating just one orange can be a lengthy process. Now think about the juice that orange would produce – it contains a similar number of calories, yet it’s gone in a gulp – in fact it takes 8 oranges to make a small glass of orange juice and it’s not filling in the slightest! It’s all about getting the most (optimum) satisfaction from your foods with Food Optimising. We count juiced, pureed and cooked fruit as Syns to protect your weight losses.

And this clearly shows that it's ok to mash your fruit! So mashing a banana is ok as it's what your teeth do but juiced, pureed and cooked is out. This makes sense as those 3 change the make up of the fruit rather than just breaking it up. The 'strands' of fibre etc get changed which changes how the body breaks it down. So it's not got more calories as that's impossible but the body works differently to digest it. It's not quite as simple as calories in vs calories out but what the body does with the fuel.
 
....and if she says it's because fruit gains calories after being blended (can't see it myself) then I shall no longer be eating blended fruit:cry:

If she says that she is talking nonsense! It is physically impossible to add calories to a food by blending it or cooking it, or dropping it from a great height!
 
I think the programme that everyone is talking about is from the BBC called 10 Things you need to know about losing weight. It explained the science behind lots of things to do with dieting and one of them was to do with blending fruit into a smoothy. A normal glass full is about 300 kcals but that would be a very large bowl of fruit salad. The smoothy just goes through your stomach quickly as the stomach treats it as a drink and just ignores it. Thereby having 300 kcal more than we need. Whereas eating the fruit salad takes longer to digest and keeps you fuller for longer.

So if you accept this fact and do it with care then as Guesswho said its all about overindulgence and just consuming too many calories. Too many calories means you don't lose weight.

On the other hand, veg & meat blended into a soup is good for your stomach as it doesn't treat this as a liquid for some reason. Bizarrely it takes longer to digest than the same ingredients if eaten whole so you stay fuller for longer and therefore are less likely to snack between meals on the wrong things.

If you haven't watched the program, you can find it on You Tube in 6 parts. It's well worth a watch.
 
I think the bottom line on blending fruit is portion control.
As already pointed out in Jaylou's post......you can physically eat 1 orange yet if you turn it into juice you will be having 8 and none of the filling 'flesh'. Drinking juice will take you seconds and will not fill you up, where as eating 1 or 2 oranges will take longer and possibly satisfy a little hunger for a while.

For me, I find it much more satisfying ploughing my way through a large bowl of fresh fuit salad whareas if I blended it, I would gulp it down and be looking for something else to eat within an hour, therefore eating eating even more food!

Personally I think it's different for veg as its generally lower in calories and doesn't contain sugar like fruit does........
 
i agree with lots of what has been said but one extra thing to add to the fruit debate!!! lol!
Eating food makes you feel full in many different ways, all of which adds up to an overall feeling of fullness and satiation. As well as the amount of food and the type of food that you eat one of the other ways is chewing, so the process of chewing sends messages that contributes to your feeling full. it all works together to tell your brain that you have had enough. So gluping down a smoothie in 2 mins doesnt make you feel as full for as long as slowly eating the same fruit piece by piece, chew by chew. cooked/pureed fruit just doesnt fill you up or keep you full in the same way that fresh fruit does because your brain hasnt recieved the same signals.
Vegetables on the other hand have very low energy densityand take a while to digest so will make you feel physicaly full for longer.

Dont forget that slimming world are trying to put together a fool proof way for EVERYONE to lose weight. as soon as they make a rule there is someone out there trying to find a way around it (egcous cous pizza!!) so they have to have clear cut rules.
that all said if you are eating smoothies and losing weight then its fine, once you know that its a tweek and not on the plan. (eg i eat 20syns plus a day but am happy with my weightloss- if i stop losing weight i know i'll need to go back to reassess, but im happy where i am at the moment).
 
i agree with lots of what has been said but one extra thing to add to the fruit debate!!! lol!
Eating food makes you feel full in many different ways, all of which adds up to an overall feeling of fullness and satiation. As well as the amount of food and the type of food that you eat one of the other ways is chewing, so the process of chewing sends messages that contributes to your feeling full. it all works together to tell your brain that you have had enough. So gluping down a smoothie in 2 mins doesnt make you feel as full for as long as slowly eating the same fruit piece by piece, chew by chew. cooked/pureed fruit just doesnt fill you up or keep you full in the same way that fresh fruit does because your brain hasnt recieved the same signals.
Vegetables on the other hand have very low energy densityand take a while to digest so will make you feel physicaly full for longer.

Dont forget that slimming world are trying to put together a fool proof way for EVERYONE to lose weight. as soon as they make a rule there is someone out there trying to find a way around it (egcous cous pizza!!) so they have to have clear cut rules.
that all said if you are eating smoothies and losing weight then its fine, once you know that its a tweek and not on the plan. (eg i eat 20syns plus a day but am happy with my weightloss- if i stop losing weight i know i'll need to go back to reassess, but im happy where i am at the moment).

also I think it has something to do with the roughage in whole pieces of fruit and veg... it takes the body the same amount of calories to digest it as it does to eat so it cancels the calories out! Pureed stuff doesn't need the extra work put in.
 
Whilst I agree with most of the points here, food can 'gain' calories. Toast has more than bread. No idea why though!

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Whilst I agree with most of the points here, food can 'gain' calories. Toast has more than bread. No idea why though!

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If you take a slice of bread and toast it, the two will have the same amount of calories.

However, a slice of toast weighs less than a slice of bread as you will have evaporated some of the water content in the toasting process - toast is lighter than bread. So weight for weight, toast does have more calories than fresh bread.

But that is not because it has "gained" calories.
 
Sassia said:
Whilst I agree with most of the points here, food can 'gain' calories. Toast has more than bread. No idea why though!

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Ha ha! This made me chuckle! A piece of bread cannot physically increase in calories! Maybe it's to do with the mass of the bread decreasing when it's toasted!! How bizarre!! Lol

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AnnaFaraday said:
If you take a slice of bread and toast it, the two will have the same amount of calories.

However, a slice of toast weighs less than a slice of bread as you will have evaporated some of the water content in the toasting process - toast is lighter than bread. So weight for weight, toast does have more calories than fresh bread.

But that is not because it has "gained" calories.

Oops, didn't read this before I replied! Just saw the bit about toast and laughed ? x so it's pretty much the same as what I said :)

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Muscle does not weigh more than fat, and you cannot build muscle after a few workouts. It takes a very long time, and intensive weight lifting workouts to build muscle, so if you STS or have a small gain after starting exercise it will likely be water assisting the muscle repair and not weight gain. Also, 1lb of fat weighs the same as 1lb of muscle.

Yes, If you have a pound of fat and a pound of muscle, they both weigh a pound. But volume wise you get much more fat to the pound than you do muscle. About 2 handfuls of muscle weigh a pound but 4 handfuls of fat weigh a pound. So volume wise it does weigh more. I think that's what people mean when they say that.
 
Sorry, the top paragraph of my last quote was not me, it was quoted from a previous quote. My part is the bottom
Paragraph. :)
 
KittyD said:
Sorry, the top paragraph of my last quote was not me, it was quoted from a previous quote. My part is the bottom
Paragraph. :)

When you click quote-make sure you leave the brackets and the word 'quote' on there and it'll stay in a quote box like that! :)

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